The Shimbiri crew: weather, manuals and systems.
The Shimbiri crew reads the boat manuals, watches the systems and plans the passage. Built by a keen sailor who needed it to make sense of everything a boat throws at him. Every line tested on the ocean, built and proven on a real boat, across a real season. The adaptive layer keeps learning from how she’s run.
The system thinks like a small, capable crew.
Each crew member owns a domain. The Captain brings in whichever of them your question needs. You ask one question; whichever crew members are needed answer together, and you see one synthesised reply, not a wall of dashboards.
Answers from your boat’s own instruments, manuals and logs
Routes whatever you ask to whichever crew member can answer. Asks the Purser for the manual spec, the Chief Engineer for the live reading, and gives you one answer with both. The conductor.
Ties the whole crew together into one watch.
Marine forecasts compared model by model, and anchor watch
It works from the same sources the best tools use, so the read is about your boat, here and now. Passage briefings use a current forecast. Ben’s first Sydney–Hobart, the 80th, was a PHS Division 1 win with this voice briefing the watches.
Several forecast models, checked against the wind near you.
Passage plans on your own polars, departure times and tide gates
Asks what the passage is for, and so: do we go, when, and is it still the right plan? Plans on your boat’s own polars, compares departure times, and times the bars and channels. Race Officer when you race.
Remote monitoring and alerts for every system aboard
Watches every NMEA system continuously: battery, fuel, water, engine, generator, solar. Sends you a vessel briefing on WhatsApp every morning. When an alarm goes off, it tells you why.
The Chief Engineer found a hidden autopilot fault from the boat’s stored data, and saved thousands.
Boat maintenance, spares and compliance, organised
Bosun and quartermaster. Knows what’s due, what’s on board, what’s running out. Files the evidence when a job is done. Spots a pattern when impellers fail every 500 hours instead of the manual’s 800. Builds the Cat 1 audit pack so the surveyor finds the boat ready.
Guided Shimbiri through the Category 1 certifications, audit-ready for the Sydney–Hobart.
A search engine for your boat, answered from your own manuals
Every manual on the boat, searchable, with the page you can open. Ask about a fault code, get the manufacturer’s procedure with the page reference. Every answer traces back to a page you can open and verify.
A skipper photographed a flood and was walked through the fix. 359 manuals indexed; the right page cited.
Crew, certificates, conversations and the calendar, with the boat in the chat
Who’s on board, what they’re qualified for, and when each cert expires. Crew threads and the calendar, with the boat as a member of the chat. Watch handovers in two minutes. No more spreadsheets.
Every crew ticket and expiry, tracked to the day.
The kind of questions the crew answers: Cat 1, survey, SMS, a fault at 2am? See the answers →
This is Shimbiri, running on a real boat, right now.
Every screen here is the live system on the Hanse 575. Not a render.
“The win was the people. Tristan Hamilton, our Sailing Master, was central to it, and the crew system dropped him: it didn’t carry people or their certifications across, and his role was left off the first cut, so ‘Sailing Master’ never made the official merchandise. I had to call and escalate to a manager before he was put back. A man essential to the result nearly went unmentioned, because the admin failed him, not the other way round. Boats are won by people. The tech should carry them, not lose them.”
Ben Shipley · Founder
No rip-and-replace. Plugs into what’s already there.
The platform speaks the protocols your boat already speaks. The Chief Engineer pack is one install, not a refit.
Every sound, warning, and data stream tells a story.